My goal with this blog is to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… so no one has a reason to have a heightened sense of themselves. We are all ignorant, we are all found wanting, we are all bad people sometimes.

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Guest Post – Concerns About Sexuality May Be Misplaced By Parents – Be the Parent Who Knows

Worrying about teenage children and sex is natural. As a parent of two adult children, I know about worrying about teenagers.

It seems that parents are worried about the wrong things for the most part, though, and the actions many take to in reaction to their fears are not very affective.

The biggest concerns of a lot of parents, according to reports, are pregnancy and what they can watch on the internet. What parents apparently don’t know is that pregnancy among teenagers is very low in comparison to the number who get sexually transmitted infections.

Bad body image is another problem. Did you know that many teens and young women are getting labia surgery to look like stars they see on the part of the internet that many parents think they block? And many parents will even help them get it, as well as other plastic surgeries, since they think it’ll help their self-esteem.

What kids need is better education. Quite often, youth just want to ask their parents but don’t feel they can. Do the parents know the answers? Not likely. Things keep changing so we have to keep up with society to know how to answer these kind of questions.

There are few resources in the United States that give us the education we need as adults to help our youth. They need a lot more than “here’s a condom” or scare stories about diseases.

You can get the age-appropriate information about sexuality for your youth and yourself. There’s a well-written curriculum, taught by trained teachers, and probably classes near you. It’s called “Our Whole Lives (OWL)”.

There are 6 versions for 6 different times of our lives: : grades K-1, grades 4-6, grades 7-9, grades 10-12, young adults (ages 18-35), and adults. They cover human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. They do NOT go into how to do it, though they could recommend resources for that if it’s age-appropriate.

Take a class. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll probably want your children to take one, too. Do a search to find one in your area or feel free to ask me to help you find one.

2 thoughts on “Guest Post – Concerns About Sexuality May Be Misplaced By Parents – Be the Parent Who Knows”

Coincidentally, I am working on a review of the book “Kids Gone Wild: From Rainbow Parties to Sexting, Understanding the Hype Over Teen Sex”! There does seem to be a lot of worry over things that I have never seen, either around me when I was a teen, or in the lives of the many teens I work with. I always remind myself that I should never assume that either things do not exist at all, or are rampant in every single school in North America. But the media makes it hard to remain objective and level headed!